Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, best known for authoring the infamous anti-Trump dossier, has reached a deal with American officials to answer questions about his work for the FBI, according to The Times of London.
The Times, citing a source close to Steele, reported that the former spy will meet American officials in London in the coming weeks.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the dossier via a law firm during the 2016 presidential campaign. The FBI used the dossier to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump-campaign associate Carter Page.
Top FBI and DOJ officials signed off on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on Page, despite evidence that Steele’s dossier was unverified and that the former British spy was biased against Trump. The FISA application omitted the fact that the Clinton campaign funded the dossier as well as exculpatory details of Page’s assistance to the FBI.
The Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) is close to completing an inquiry into the FBI’s handling of the FISA process and whether improper political considerations played into the bureau’s surveillance of Page. Steele agreed to speak to the inspector general after learning that the soon-to-be-released OIG report is critical of him and his credibility.
A source close to Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele’s firm, told the Times that the former spy will retain an American lawyer for the interview. Steele has limited the scope of the questioning to his work for the FBI. Steele also asked the Justice Department to obtain permission from British officials before the interview.
An anonymous senior government source told the Times that there was no request to interview Steele. Whether to testify or not would be Steele’s decision since he is no longer in government service, the source added.
Steele paid second- and third-hand sources with ties to the Kremlin for the raw intelligence he included in his report. None of the claims in the report which are damaging to Trump or his associates have been verified, despite yearslong investigations by the FBI, special counsel Robert Mueller, and Congress.
In British court filings, Steele has admitted that he was hired in order to produce a dossier which his client could use to challenge the results of the 2016 presidential election. According to State Department documents declassified through a Freedom of Information Act request, Steele told State Department official Kathleen Kavalec that his client was eager to see the dossier become public before the 2016 election.
The Times also reports that Steele’s dossier “led to an FBI inquiry” of the Trump campaign which later evolved into the special counsel investigation. The newspaper does not provide a source for the claim, which is different from the FBI’s official narrative that the investigation of the Trump campaign began based on comments by Trump-campaign advisor George Papadopoulos.
According to the FBI’s current narrative, as laid out in the final report by Mueller, the bureau opened the investigation into the Trump campaign after learning that Papadopoulos told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
From The Epoch Times
